Brexit, Trump and me…

Blimey, you wait six weeks for a blog post and then two come along at once…

I tried to write this post before, I really did. Cycling to work of a morning, I would mull it over in my mind, drafting what I could sensibly say. But it was all just too jumbled up to unpick.

OK, here goes. 2016 has been a shitstorm. We all know that. For us though, there was an added personal element: Steve’s Dad became critically ill at the start of the year, and by the Summer, he was gone. In amongst that came Brexit. Other, smarter people than me have written great articles so I won’t even try to unpack the unholy mess, but suffice to say that it threw us both for a loop. We did not feel ‘at home’ in our own country any more. Having talked in the abstract about maybe, possibly, moving abroad for a year whilst the kids were still young, it dawned upon us both that maybe if we did not do it now, then perhaps our options would be severely curtailed in the fallout of Brexit. For us, losing Steve’s Dad also pulled into sharper focus the thought that life is short, and we better damn well get on with living it to the full.

So why not just go for it, we thought? And of course it all happened so much faster than we anticipated, and it was scary, and exhilarating, and crazy.

And in some quirk of fate, we ended up moving to Copenhagen the day of the US election. And we all know how that worked out. Brexit Redux.

Again, I have no pithy social commentary. Just sitting here, feeling weird because this has been the most extraordinary of years. In good ways, in the worst of ways. But I’m glad we’re here. As scary as it is to be starting over, it is also a new slate.

Let’s hope we can get to the end of 2016 with no more nasty surprises. 2017, I have never been more ready for a fresh start…